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Naturschutz und Umwelt in der US‐Agrargesetzgebung
Author(s) -
Lichtenberg Erik
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
eurochoices
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.487
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1746-692X
pISSN - 1478-0917
DOI - 10.1111/1746-692x.12214
Subject(s) - sustainability , business , agriculture , environmental planning , natural resource economics , environmental quality , natural resource , legislation , payment , land use , environmental resource management , environmental protection , geography , economics , political science , engineering , ecology , civil engineering , archaeology , finance , law , biology
Summary Conservation programmes have been a feature of US agricultural policy since the 1930s. Farmers are paid to take farmland out of production and to install or maintain farming practices to reduce erosion and runoff or to protect wildlife habitat. Budgets for these programmes have grown substantially over the past two decades and they have become major vehicles for making payments to farmers. The goals are to promote agricultural sustainability and to enhance environmental quality. Providing income support to farmers is an explicit goal of some of the programmes and an implicit function of others. They operate by paying farmers to convert environmentally sensitive land to more sustainable uses; to adopt or maintain runoff‐ and erosion‐reducing practices on working farmland; or to preserve land of environmental or cultural importance in its current condition. The benefits of conserving agriculture's natural resource base are largely private while the benefits of environmental quality improvements are largely public. Income support (and thus political) considerations have dominated the geographic distribution of spending, to the detriment of potential achievements in environmental quality improvement. These programmes remain important as virtually the only means by which non‐point source pollution from agriculture is addressed in the United States.

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